"Identity" - The Narrative

This is a short summary of our narrative for our film 'Identity'. We wrote down a basic timeline of events between the three of us and then Olivia Gascoine rewrote and summarised it to the above in a format similar to a DVD blurb. Short punchy sentences and descriptive language describes the story without giving away too much thus making viewers want to watch our film. 

I then took our narrative and converted it into a short premise.

Character Costume Designs

To create our character costume designs we used a website called Polyvore which enabled us to choose specific clothing items from an online inventory. It's extremely easy to use, delivers our message in an instant visual style and allows us to pick every detail of our character's persona along with providing us an extensive prop list that we need to plan prior to shooting.

Thoughts when designing Blake's outfit were centered around ideas of portraying her as glamorous, bold, sophisticated and seductive because we want to present her with traits of a femme fatale character. This outfit could also represent our target [female] audience, making them feel directly addressed as they can relate to what Blake is wearing and ultimately feel more at threat as a result.

When designing 'The Husband's' outfit, we were aware he has quite a minor role in comparison to Blake, but we wanted their personalities to match, to represent a realistic married couple. As we are going down the route of having a modernised 1940s glamour theme, we wanted him to look sleek, presentable and attractive. Yet we didn't want him to look too business like, as he is the opposition to the 'hustling city of London'.

Mia is the second identity of Blake. We wanted to make sure there was a stark contrast between the two characters to make sure the audience don't get confused, and are aware of her identity transformation. Glamour and sophistication is kept in tact, with the addition of a black dress, coat and hat to represent Saussure's semiotics of danger, death, manipulative, secretive and shady personality. Black also means Mia can walk by unnoticed, hiding within the shadows, camouflaging in the monochrome film noir filter or diffuse into the night sky of London.

The additional character, the Private Investigator, needs to be presented as smart to reflect his job and respected status. His outfit contrasts with The Husbands thus reinforcing a heirachy of class/status. The colour of his suit will be neutral as he is not one of the main characters. His props will involve a brief case or a folder containing the 'exhibits' which are the bank statements and letters of 'evidence' to show The Husband. He will also have an Apple Mac laptop on which he uses to show CCTV footage. The laptop further stresses his highly paid job and professionalism.

Film Noir Moodboards

This is a moodboard I created from images found on Google and Flickr. This visual representation summarises the themes, codes and conventions often typically found in film noirs. Click on the images to view a much clearer overall moodboard.

This is my moodboard without text

Moodboard with text. You can see that the text coincides with the groupings of pictures that surround it. The text that I added are the common themes or conventions seen in Film Noirs that I previously researched in my video voiceover essay.

This is the iPad Application I used to create my moodboard. The app is called "Moodboard Lite" and was versatile in that I could edit photo size and position and also add text, layers and colour palettes if I wanted to. I think I will make a lot of use of this App throughout my Media coursework

"A Beautiful Mess" I used this app to add the text onto the second moodboard. This app was really easy to use and very productive as there are a large range of fonts, colours and decor I can use.

"Moldiv" And finally I used his App to collage the two moodboards together (I created two smaller rectangles and merged them). I then saved it to my iPad, uploaded it to Dropbox and exported it to Blogger.

Notes on "Detour" - 1945

Detour - a Film Noir from 1945. We watched this in class over a period of a few lessons and theses are the notes and analysis I made on the film. These notes really helped me to understand and realise the conventions, and see them in action. Splitting my notes into headings also enabled me to segregate my analytic thoughts  when watching and witness how much planning needs to go into a film in order to make it effective, gripping and intriguing for the audience.

"Brick" - Detailed Analysis

In class we all contributed to a detailed, extensive analysis of the neo-noir film Brick which was produced in 2005. This was really good as we got to gain ideas of our peers and think up new ideas between us by bouncing ideas off of eachother. I will use this analysis in my video essay analysis of Brick along with my own other written notes. Picking apart the film like this was really helpful because it enabled us to produce more concentrated, specific and detailed analysis not only from the film itself, but from individual scenes and characters. This will also help me when I get to the stage of evaluating my own Film Noir that I produce. Below are the mindmaps our class all added to:

Semiotics in Brick. Ferdinand Saussure's semiotics of colour theory was related to here.

This mind map explored the common codes and conventions visited throughout Brick. Red pen are the subverted conventions and black pen are the typical, conformed conventions.

Levi Strauss' Binary Oppositions theory applied to; the scenes, characters, themes, cinematography, lighting, props, costumes and narrative features in Brick

Stereotypical characters and themes seen in Brick

This was a tricky one to analyse. The ideology present in Brick

Barthes' Enigma code was present throughout the narrative

More narrative theory analysis

Focused character analysis including Vladamir Propp's character theory

Location Ideas

We decided upon London for the main part of our filming because we want to portray a sense of modernisation. This subverts the usual conventions of black and white Film Noir's being filmed back in the 1950s so we want to give the entire film a modern twist by filming powerful, architectural train stations whilst including backstreet alleyways and glass buildings. With London, we will have a large variety of areas to shoot in which I feel will really extend the narrative and the idea that in our narrative the woman is being followed across a long journey. To begin with I've researched some train stations to get an idea of where we want to travel. We are also thinking about using a warehouse I have in Letchworth which would be a really good ending location to our narrative as there are steel railings (similar to the blinds convention in film noirs), empty rooms, darkness and stark contrast using spotlighting inside the warehouse building. The warehouse is situated on Works Road in Letchworth which is within an industrial estate - futher adding to a typical film noir theme of isolation.

Kings Cross: again fantastic architecture, the high ledge/balcony would also be great for our high angle shot we want to try where we use a slow motion blurring effect to accentuate the busyness of London whilst simultaneously adding a distortive/flashback aspect to the viewer. Kings Cross is also very well known, so it acts as a good 'relative' location to the audience who will be able to relate themselves to the film. CCTV cameras will also be abundant so we will be able to get the shots of the moving cameras like we wanted to - to represent our theme of identity.

St. Pancras International: really strong architecture, well-lit, escalators good for both 'modern' theme and for the shot we want of the femme fatale going up the escalator and the male following her.

Top and bottom: Both Southwark station. Very modern, good for creating stark differences in light, lots of shadows and reflections could be made.

Glass lifts at Kings Cross. Really good for making shadows, reflections, in-depth photos with people and trains in the background

Brainstorming - Early Stages of our Film Noir production

Today we managed to complete the basis of our narratives, produce an outline of theme ideas and begun thinking throughly about our location, characters, dates for filming and camera shot ideas. In our group to produce this film noir is myself, Olivia Gascoine and Ellie Morphew. Working as a group is really effective and helpful as we originally had a mind block for our narrative idea. However when we discussed small and vague ideas, we managed to bounce ideas off of each other and begin a pathway for our Film Noir to follow. The biggest achievement of todays lesson is our target to construct and design our film around the theme of 'Identity'. Below is a voiceover of our discussions in lesson today which was complimented by a mind map which we have been working on since the start of the project:

N.B: Click photo to view larger and enable clearer text!

Film Noir -History, Culture, Origin and Conventions

Video Essay w/Voiceover on Film Noir History, Culture, Codes and Conventions. Constructed using Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, YouTube and Google Images

Written extensive power point notes

Film Noir Codes, Conventions, Culture